This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and labour productivity in small and medium enterprises in Italy. By means of structural equations models, the analysis investigates the effect of different aspects of the multifaceted concept of social...

Codecision is the main EU legislative procedure and the 2007 Reform Treaty draft has adopted it to improve the budgetary process. However, at close examination, codecision and the current budgetary process show an identical structure. Both are designed as non-cooperative alternating offers...

The debate on the response of hours worked after productivity improvements is still an open issue in the theoretical and empirical literature. In this work we show that, once conditional correlations are taken into account, both hours and investment decline temporarily following a positive...

This note critically evaluates the ‘macro-monetary’ interpretation of Marx’s theory presented by Moseley (2000) in opposition to the traditional view rooted in the early work of Bortkiewicz. The first part argues that the textual evidence from Capital sharply contrasts with...

The purposes of this paper are twofold: first, it aims at critically evaluating the solvency criterion, pioneered by Hamilton and Flavin (1986), which is nowadays almost hegemonic in the analysis of public debt sustainability, and at illustrating alternative measures of sustainability grounded...

This paper presents estimation of the Grossman-Helpman (1994) model for the EU. We try to address a number of pitfalls that surround the previous empirical literature. First, we suggest a new identification strategy that enables to single out politically organized sectors with specific regard to...

We consider a technologically backward country and analyse the implications on competitiveness and long-run growth of the quality content of traded goods. We build an endogenous growth model where quality improvements stem from research activity taking place in the R&D sector, and where the...

The following note is concerned with the definition of IPE, a computable index measuring the intensity of the evolutionary process relative to a given market. In order to reach such a goal, by using a suitable set of axioms, it is necessary to reconstruct the evolution of the firm productive...

In the inheritance tax debates of the 1920s the proposals formulated by theItalian philosopher Eugenio Rignano occupied a prominent position. Since then, his contribution has been largely, although not completely, forgotten. This paper reviews the Rignano’s ideas by focusing upon its...